One might think that there would
be little left to say about this event: the culmination of the ‘Director’s
Festival’ marking the close of William Lyne’s 37 – year tenure as the
Hall’s director had been given so much advance hype by the musical establishment
that a sense of surfeit should surely have crept in. Why, a ‘Times’
critic even went so far as to say that he’d learnt more from eavesdropping
on audience conversations here than he’d absorbed during his university
course (well, we knew one of them would come clean one day, didn’t we)
– and that was just one of several opportunities to fill columns with
pleasantly superior musings about this wonderful hall and its truly
remarkable director. In the event, there proved to be plenty to say,
not all of it predictable, and any sense of complacency gave way very
early on to disappointment, since no fewer than five of the scheduled
performers were indisposed: one may imagine Lyne’s regret that they
included two of his most beloved singers of the present generation,
Matthias Goerne and Thomas Quasthoff. It was left to the remaining artists,
augmented by a few gallant stand-ins to provide a demonstration of Lyne’s
excellent taste and the hall’s deep sense of tradition.

It was inevitable that the performers
would comprise a mixture of generations from the very young, represented
by performers such as the Belcea Quartet, through the well established
such as Ian Bostridge and on to the veteran such as Anne Evans, the
last group providing this – inevitably, given the ticket prices and
scarcity of same – predominantly mature audience with ample opportunity
for reminiscence. Those oldies can still cut it, though, and most of
them gave the younger generation something to think about. In Part One,
although it was a sad loss to be deprived of Goerne’s singing of Schumann’s
Kerner Lieder, there was still a great deal to relish, especially from
Olaf Baer and Angelika Kirchschlager, neatly representing the younger
and older generations of singers.

In Quasthoff’s absence it fell
to the mezzo to be the first voice of the evening, and she sounded understandably
nervous in ‘An die Musik’ but still managed to make this well loved
piece sound fresh: with the Brahms folk songs she was entirely at her
ease, and gave ample demonstration of why she is regarded as the
mezzo soprano in this repertoire. Kirchschlager seems to make it
a speciality to perform songs which are otherwise neglected, and ‘Da
unten im Tale’ is a perfect example: she sang this seemingly artless
little song with the most moving intonation imaginable, and gave expression
to every nuance of its bitter message – Julius Drake accompanied her
superbly.

Olaf Baer has been a prominent
Lieder singer for nearly twenty years now, and I have never heard him
sing as beautifully as he did tonight: I have tended to regard him as
‘school-of-DFD-very-pleasant-nothing-special’ in the past, but on this
showing he moved me as never before. He was of course given two absolute
gems, Wolf’s ‘Benedeit die sel’ge Mutter’ and Schubert’s ‘Die Taubenpost’
but he sang them as though they both needed passionate advocacy: one
might wish for greater anguish in a line like ‘Ach, der Wahnsinn fast
mich an!’ but the Wolf was otherwise wonderfully performed, every phrase
informed with the most exact yet loving art. Lyne programmed ‘Taubenpost’
in honour of Baer’s singing of the three Schubert cycles in 1988, ‘…one
of the most memorable events of my directorship…’ and Baer did not disappoint
him. Despite one awkward moment when he and Malcolm Martineau parted
company for a bar or two, this was Lieder singing of a very high order,
the phrasing exemplary, the diction precise, the interpretation emotionally
involving without coyness, those matchless closing lines sung with as
much tenderness as I’ve ever heard. There are still plenty of seats
left for Tuesday’s recital, in which Baer will sing an enticing programme
of Brahms, Schubert, Wolf and Frank Martin – highly recommended.

The first part of the concert
ended with a somewhat indifferent performance of ‘Auf dem Strom’ by
Ian Bostridge, replete with dramatic vocal gesture but lacking in word
sensitivity and subtlety: Steven Isserlis provided sweetly flowing lines
in accompaniment, the ‘cello sounding at least as noble as the horn
can. Bostridge was again much in evidence in the second part, singing
Hahn’s ‘Tyndaris’ eloquently but giving a disappointing rendition of
one of Lyne’s favourite Schubert songs, ‘Nähe des Geliebten’ –
again, plenty of drama but little sense of that aching melancholy with
which it should be infused. The most impressive performance in this
part was by James Bowman, his Oberon just as unearthly, poetic and mesmerizing
as it once was at Glyndebourne – what a pity he was given so little
to sing here.

There was plenty more to delight
lovers of twentieth, and indeed twenty-first century music in this part,
with a fine performance of Finzi’s ‘To Lizbie Browne’ from Gerald Finley
and Julius Drake, who also gave the premiere of Julian Philips’ highly
evocative setting of Emily Dickinson’s ‘There is a morn by men unseen’
which had been specially commissioned for this concert: an excellent
way to demonstrate that the Wigmore looks to the present and future
as well as the past. The Belcea Quartet gave a superb performance of
Webern’s ‘Langsamer Satz’ to open this part, followed by Paul Agnew
with Dowland’s ‘Come again: sweet love doth now invite’ which he sang
with elegant, supple grace: then came Mark Wilde with another courtly
poet, Richard Lovelace, this time set by William Denis Browne, followed
by Christopher Maltman’s glorious singing of Vaughan Williams’ ‘The
splendour falls.’

Dame Felicity Lott sang Fauré’s
‘Les roses d’Ispahan’ and ‘Die Forelle’ with her accustomed skills in
characterization and idiomatic phrasing, and Lisa Milne had the privilege
of performing one of the neglected gems of the song repertoire, Hahn’s
exquisite ‘A Chloris’ given in a dramatic, operatic style which seemed
to me to be inappropriate for this piece, which can be so moving if
sung with unaffected directness – Malcolm Martineau provided eloquent
accompaniment. In contrast to all this lush vocal music Dmitri Alexeev
gave performances of three Chopin waltzes that were as distant from
the usual empty showiness as could possibly be imagined, rich in nuance
and elegantly virtuosic.

The third part was generally more
frivolous in tone, featuring such delights as Simon Crawford-Phillips
and Philip Moore enjoying themselves with ‘Souvenirs de Bayreuth,’ Roger
Vignoles stepping out of the role of discreet accompanist and into that
of singer with an hilarious ‘message from Sarah Walker’ addressed of
course to Lyne, a ‘Gendarmes’ duet’ (Offenbach) from Bostridge and Maltman
which was sheer, uproarious joy, and a not-too-cringeworthy ‘Three Little
maids from School’ by Lott, Ann Murray and Catherine Wyn-Rogers, who
also sang ‘I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls’ quite superbly. Dame Anne
Evans contributed a moving ‘David of the white rock’ and Diana Montague
a very fine ‘So in Love’ but the ‘star’ of this segment was undoubtedly
Christine Brewer, who not only sang ‘Dich, teure Halle’ with breathtaking
skill and superb drama, but actually managed to move me very much with
Bob Merrill’s ‘Mira’ (from ‘Carnival’) a feat which I would not previously
have imagined possible. Her BBC Lunchtime recital this Monday is eagerly
awaited.

The musical part of the evening
ended, appropriately, with the new director’s own arrangement of Vaughan
Williams’ ‘Serenade to music’ in which sixteen singers, the violinist
Anthony Marwood, Steven Isserlis, the Belcea Quartet and Roger Vignoles
were directed by Matthew Best: sad though Lyne must have been not to
have had all his favourites on stage, it certainly was a sight to see
so many eminent names on this tiny platform, and they performed this
piece with all the fervour appropriate to the occasion. Speeches and
presentations followed, the most memorable moments of which were provided
by the vulnerable figure of Lyne himself, never the most confident of
public speakers, thanking his staff and the Wigmore’s regular audience
for providing him with the support he needed to fashion this little
place into what Barbara Bonney (who was onstage but did not sing) once
called ‘The greatest concert hall in the world.’